Jane Wyman, 90, Star Of Film and TV, Is Dead

By RICHARD SEVERO; Margalit Fox contributed reporting.

Published: September 11, 2007

CORRECTION APPENDED

Correction Appended

Jane Wyman, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of a victimized deaf woman in the 1948 movie ''Johnny Belinda,'' played a fierce matriarch in the 1980s television series ''Falcon Crest'' and was the first wife of President Ronald Reagan, died Monday at her home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. She was 90.

Her death was confirmed by Jonathan Bernstein, a family spokesman.

Ms. Wyman started her movie career in the 1930s playing wisecracking chorus girls before winning the Academy Award and three other best-actress Oscar nominations between 1947 to 1955.

She rekindled her star power in her 60s, playing Angela Channing, the domineering owner of a Northern California winery in ''Falcon Crest,'' which ran from 1981 to 1990.

She had met Mr. Reagan in the late 1930s and appeared with him in the comedy ''Brother Rat'' (1938). They were married in 1940, had a daughter, Maureen, and then adopted a son, Michael, before divorcing in 1949.

Ms. Wyman's Oscar came for her sensitive performance in ''Johnny Belinda'' (1948), in which she played a deaf woman whose pregnancy resulting from a rape causes a scandal. Archer Winsten, writing in The New York Post, called her performance ''surpassingly beautiful.''

''It is all the more beautiful in its accomplishment without words,'' he added.

While preparing for ''Johnny Belinda,'' Miss Wyman studied at a school for the deaf for six months, learning sign language. She memorized the lines of the other actors and performed with her ears plugged.

She also won praise for portraying a timid disabled woman in a 1950 adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play ''The Glass Menagerie,'' opposite Kirk Douglas, and an Oscar nomination for her performance as a blind widow in the 1954 remake of ''Magnificent Obsession,'' with Rock Hudson.

Two other Oscar nominations as best actress came for her roles as a backwoods mother in ''The Yearling'' (1947), also starring Gregory Peck, and as a saintly nursemaid in ''The Blue Veil'' (1951), with Charles Laughton and a young Natalie Wood.

A capable singer -- she sang on the radio in the 1930s -- Ms. Wyman shared a hit record, ''In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,'' which she recorded with Bing Crosby in 1951 for the movie ''Here Comes the Groom.'' The song, a Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer composition, won a 1952 Oscar.

Ms. Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield in Missouri on Jan. 5, 1917, to Manning J. Mayfield and Gladys Hope Christian. Her parents divorced in 1921, and the next year her father died of pneumonia at the age of 27. Her mother then moved to Cleveland. Placed in the care of neighbors, Richard and Emma Fulks, she was reared in St. Joseph, Mo., and took their surname.

She recalled a bleak childhood, remembering Mr. Fulks, a chief of detectives in St. Joseph, as a harsh disciplinarian. He died when Ms. Wyman was 11, and Mrs. Fulks then took Ms. Wyman to Los Angeles, where Mrs. Fulks had two grown children. They returned to Missouri in 1930.

But Ms. Wyman, intent on a show business career, moved back to Hollywood two years later and began working as chorus girl, eventually landing a job as a dancer in Busby Berkeley's movie ''The Kid From Spain,'' starring Eddie Cantor. The chorus line included Paulette Goddard and Betty Grable.

In his biography of Mr. Reagan, ''Dutch,''Edmund Morris wrote that Ms. Wyman married Ernest Eugene Wyman in 1933, claiming to be three years older than her actual age, 16, on the marriage certificate. She divorced him two years later.

After several years of chorus-girl roles and bit parts, Ms. Wyman signed a $60-a-week contract with the Warner Brothers studio in 1936. Dropping Sarah, she took Jane Wyman as her professional name. She then embarked on a number of B-movie comedies, typically playing the fast-talking blond sidekick.

Increasingly recognized as a serious actress, though, she began getting better roles in the early 1940s, then had a breakthrough in 1945, in the Billy Wilder drama ''The Lost Weekend,'' winning praise as the patient girlfriend of an alcoholic (Ray Milland) who goes on a bender.

The performance led to a series of leading roles, including the four nominated for Oscars.

Ms. Wyman met Mr. Reagan the same year, 1938, that she divorced Myron Futterman, a dress manufacturer 15 years her senior, whom she had married in 1937. Mr. Reagan and Ms. Wyman were rising stars, and their romance and marriage were covered in the fan magazines.

Their daughter, Maureen, was born in 1941. She died of cancer in 2001. They adopted Michael in 1945. Another daughter, Christine, died the day after she was born premature, in 1947. The marriage ended in divorce in 1949, and afterward neither Mr. Reagan nor Ms. Wyman spoke publicly at any length about their years together.

Michael Reagan, of Sherman Oaks, Calif., survives his mother, as do two grandchildren.

In 1952, Ms. Wyman married Fred Karger, a band leader. They were divorced in 1954. She married him again in 1963, but that union also ended in divorce. Mr. Reagan was married again as well, to Nancy Davis, the future first lady, in 1952.

In the mid-1950s, Ms. Wyman surprised Hollywood when she switched to television, becoming the host of ''Fireside Theater'' (later ''The Jane Wyman Theater''), a dramatic series in which she acted occasionally.

As a film actress, she also had roles as an impulsive drama student in ''Stage Fright'' (1950); an abiding wife in ''The Story of Will Rogers'' (1952) and a love-struck secretary in ''Miracle in the Rain'' (1956). One of her last notable film roles was in the popular 1960 Disney film ''Polyanna.'' She also had a guest stint playing Jane Seymour's mother on the 90s television series ''Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.''

Ms. Wyman's return to prominence on ''Falcon Crest'' coincided with the advent of the Reagan administration, and she was said to have tired of being identified as the president's first wife long after their divorce. Her agent, Robert Raison, told The New York Times in 1981 that she wearied of being hounded for gossip about Mr. Reagan's life with her.

But she broke her silence about him after he died in 2004, saying ''America has lost a great president and a great, kind and gentle man.''

In her later years she painted in oils, mostly landscapes, and for five years sold her works through a Carmel, Calif., gallery. She aided the Arthritis Foundation for more than 20 years and was its chairman for a time.

Ms. Wyman was always proud of the roles that had brought her acclaim and was always on guard, she said, against roles unworthy of her. ''I don't like all the sick pictures being made,'' she said at one point late in her career. ''I simply refused to play a prostitute, a drug addict.''

''Nonexposure,'' she added, ''is better than appearing in the wrong thing.''

Correction: September 10, 2007

Because of an editing error, an obituary yesterday about the actress Jane Wyman erroneously included a performance among those for which she received Oscar nominations. She was not nominated for ''The Glass Menagerie.'' The obituary also included other errors. She was divorced from Ronald Reagan in 1949, as noted elsewhere in the obituary, not 1948. Her film ''The Yearling'' was released in 1946, not 1947. And the surname of a critic for The New York Post who wrote admiringly of Ms. Wyman's Oscar-winning performance in ''Johnny Belinda'' was misspelled. He was Archer Winsten, not Winston.

PHOTOS: Ms. Wyman in her role on ''Falcon Crest,'' around 1982. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LANDOV/CBS, VIA PHOTOFEST); Jane Wyman in the drama ''Johnny Belinda'' (1948). (PHOTOGRAPH BY WARNER HOME VIDEO)

Correction: September 12, 2007, Wednesday
Because of an editing error, an obituary yesterday about the actress Jane Wyman erroneously included a performance among those for which she received Oscar nominations. She was not nominated for ''The Glass Menagerie.'' The obituary also included other errors. She was divorced from Ronald Reagan in 1949, as noted elsewhere in the obituary, not 1948. Her film ''The Yearling'' was released in 1946, not 1947. And the surname of a critic for The New York Post who wrote admiringly of Ms. Wyman's Oscar-winning performance in ''Johnny Belinda'' was misspelled. He was Archer Winsten, not Winston.

Correction: September 19, 2007, Wednesday
An obituary on Sept. 11 about the actress Jane Wyman misstated the number of surviving grandchildren. There are three, not two.